Outside of the Box
9/28/07

I am exactly halfway through my final two weeks at Big Company. While I am overjoyed to be moving on to something new, this seems like as good a time as any to reflect back on the last seven years. What did we learn? What did we like most? Least? Tell us about a time when we turned a weakness into a strength…

Obviously, a post that promises to reflect on seven years of corporate service won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. So, in summary:

That was fun, but back at it.

The rest is just a long, drawn-out version of that.

I was a freshman at a small midwestern college…

I was a newbie, greenhorn when I came to Big Company, fresh out of art school and leaving the best, although part-time, job I’ve ever had (library assistant.) There was a small, internal consulting group in Big Company that wanted another web-designer/developer on the team. I had taken a Dreamweaver class in college, so …

… so nothing! I wasn’t in any way prepared for the position. Sure I could make a static HTML page with a bunch of tables and images, but I couldn’t develop interactive Flash modules. Couldn’t create data-driven web apps with user-specific content. Couldn’t lead a “subject matter expert” session through assessment and design phases of a project.

Like any job, however, you take it and you adapt (or you move on, searching for a cure for the gamma radiation that courses through your body, moving from one town to the next as a soft piano song plays in the background…)

I was grateful for the job - it would give me a chance to pay off some debt. I can always do my art on the side, right?

A Menagerie of Talent

surrounded me at this place: high-performing, intelligent, motivated and creative individuals calling themselves “Performance Improvement Specialists.” We were lead by a man, B, with a singular vision to essentially run an independent consulting business from within a big company, like Big Company.

For his leadership team, he hired young idealists with brilliant minds who were dedicated to coaching (”coaching” is where you care about the people you’re supervising and want them to succeed for their sake, not yours.)

One such individual was X and another was T. They’re both quick-to-listen, empathic people, courageous in the faces of Big Company executives, and possessing an ever-flowing wellspring of faith in their teams. I remember thinking early on, “wow, when you work for Big Company and make big money, this is the quality of people you get to work with.”

Heh.

For the first two years, I got to work with the greatest teams and cram my brain with so much new knowledge, (though none of it had anything to do with the products Big Company sells and services.) I wish I could get my fingers to type out all of the memories of killer projects with superteams and innovative deliverables, not to mention the meta-work discussions and office shenanigans. Have you seen the show, “The Office?” It was nothing like that, nor was it like “Office Space” or the “Dilbert” comic strip.

Seriously, it was kind of cool.

Shields are Down, Captain!

What I didn’t know at the time was that to make this small, internal consulting organization work, allow us to be nimble, smart, quick, innovative, courageous, able to push back on stupid things, one man had to act as a buffer between us and the rest of Big Company. I won’t go into the boring details, but he put up with a lot of crap from miserable people working meaningless jobs.

As an aside, some of these miserable people have the misfortune of needing to demonstrate that their meaningless position is valuable to Big Company and that’s how bureaucracies are born. Sometimes, scared, hopeless people are put in positions of management. Sometimes they’re stupid, too.

While we lived the high life of value-adding project work, the buffer man, we’ll call him B, was getting beat up. B had enough and left Big Company in the third year of my employment.

A vacuum was created, and though the organization’s leadership team tried to establish itself as some sort of Parliament over the organization, the Mouth of Big Company decided to put one of her cronies in charge.

That’s when things got interesting.

“How Ya Doin’?”

A fool, a basket-case, a tyrant was put in charge. In a year, she changed the culture of the organization, from energy and innovation to malaise and fear. Where once we valued honesty, coaching and feedback, now we saw that lying and cheating and backstabbing were the tools needed in your toolbox. In two years, she managed to make the organization an undesirable place for the top talent, and many people left. By her third year, there was only a handful of us left, and our organization was a pale shadow of its former self. Even the best efforts of X, who stayed on as long as he could, weren’t enough to counter the effects of a sociopath in a purple pantsuit.

We fight back

and helped to get her fired from the company. Another long story, but I’ll say that it only came about because of some drastic measures taken by a key leader in the organization. What, did you think HR actually listened to our myriad cries for help?

I confess it felt great to see her go, but the damage was done. The organization had been chopped up, diced and most of its people were fried. I was one of the fried ones. I stayed too long and paid the price.

I let my art slip away. I think a year and a half went by and I didn’t pick up a pencil during that time. There was so much negativity at work, and I brought a lot of it home with me. I knew I had to get out, but I was too complacent to do anything. People talk about “golden handcuffs,” and I definitely had financial obligations to meet, but I wasn’t tied to the company. I just wanted to stay where I was comfortable, even if it was like the prisoner who doesn’t want to leave prison. So, the golden handcuffs were my own choice.

Things at the organization slipped away. It became unnecessary, ineffectual and misunderstood. The leadership team (I actually took to calling them “Management Team” as a jab, as true leadership was lacking, and it stuck - others actually used that term for real!) was still staffed by people put in charge by the Insane One. The knife was removed but no one stopped the bleeding!

Conversion Story

Got up one morning, got in the car, broke down on the commute in. No big deal, just didn’t want to spend the majority of my life meaninglessly. Time for a change! This was the end of 2006, beginning of 2007. I focused on my illustration, started up this blog, began looking around at places I’d like to work.

I’ve got a better opportunity now, even though I don’t know the exact details yet. All I know is that a great weight was lifted when I resigned last Friday.

Epilogue

The organization is still lost in a mire of inept leadership and a culture of fear and selfishness. Most folks are taking care of themselves, searching for new opportunities but remaining as professional as can be in the current environment. Some folks have resigned themselves to working a comfortable, albeit vision-less, 8 to 4.

I haven’t gone into the kind of detail I would need to demonstrate how fortunate I feel to have worked with certain very classy people at Big Company. I haven’t done the memories justice. I’m already starting to forget all the bad times while the great times are easy to recall.

I know that the early years were very special and I’ll always hold on to those times as a model for working with a superteam. But I don’t think I’ll return to another Big Company anytime soon. Even if a miracle happens and a highly-talented team is formed, in an environment like that, you’re always walking the razor’s edge to keep it from falling into the murky company culture.

Besides, I have some illustratin’ to do.

Some Memories from Corporate Service

• Draw Your Neighbor During Meetings
• In the Honeycomb of Office Cubicles
• A Fair Day’s Pay for an Honest Day’s Work
• The Hidden Creepiness
• The Bathroom Crap Shoot
• Performance Improvers take their toys and go home.